Rockin’ Robins
I’m enough of an old fart (but a young soul) to find blogging cutting edge.
But I’m done with dissing Twitter. Tweet away, you young whippersnappers!
All The Little Birds On Jaybird Street
Love To Hear The Robin Go Tweet Tweet Tweet!
The Iranian government has taken substantial steps to limit their citizens’ ability to use the internet. They have blocked most access to Facebook and other sites, have limited text messaging, and have cut the nation’s “bandwidth,” meaning the speed with which one can send information through the internet, but have stopped short of simply cutting of the nation’s internet connectivity (probably because they need it themselves.) However, with “tweets” of only 140 characters or less, bandwidth is a non-issue (as opposed to, for example, transmitting videos)…
…No wonder the mullahs are afraid of Twitter if it can not only help organize protests within their country but also stir up pro-freedom reactions thousands of miles away. It isn’t surprising that a CBS reporter says that all access to Twitter was blocked in Iran as of Wednesday morning. Well, until the young, tech-savvy population there finds a way around the mullah’s electronic muzzle.
I, like many others, was somewhat skeptical of Twitter but decided to get involved with it a few weeks ago after talking with conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. I asked her for her thoughts on the Twitter revolution in Iran: “I’ve tried to persuade friends for months that Twitter is much, much more than a celebrity vanity tool. The Iranian uprising has shattered that myth once and for all. In the hands of freedom-loving dissidents, the micro-blogging social network is a revolutionary samizdat — undermining the mullah-cracy’s information blockades one Tweet at a time.”
Ominously, there was another social revolution almost exactly twenty years ago against an oppressive, cruel, heartless regime. It was also covered by a nascent communications technology, namely cable TV. I don’t know what’s going to happen to the brave citizens of Iran who are trying to wrest their country from the bloody, arthritic hands of the mullahs, but I fear their fate will be similar to that of the fellow who stood in front of the ChiCom tank:
Two-dimensional.